Those crazy creationists

[corydoras]

If you are talking about a period of time which is greater than 24 hours, it is not a 'day'.

That depends on what planet you are on.

A day on Mercury is 58 days and 15 hours on Earth. Mercury has a weird orbit, a year on Mercury is only 88 Earth days. Venus, the Solar System's problem child takes 243 earth days to spin once on it's axis, and takes 224.65 Earth days to complete one orbit of the sun, so a Venusian day lasts longer than a Venusian year. Weirder still, Venus rotates 'backwards'. If you could stand on the Venusian surface without being burnt to a crisp, and were able to see through it's dense atmosphere you would see the sun rise in the west and set in the east.

Edited August 9, 2009 by corydoras

[kleinboet]

Emma2 - I think you better go back to school and get your money back if my words are a "incoherent jumble of words".

 

Cory that is just what I said - a "day" can be a lot of different times, from Mars to Saturn a "day" differs greatly - so my belief is that the creator's "day" is of unknown length! We may disagree on religion but those who say the statement about creating the world in six days is "imposible" are trying to use the earthly day - which, quite simply, doesn't work. I have let it be known on this forum that I am a chemist and a believer. I believe in evolution, it has been proved, even though many people reject the work done on this as proof. I look at myself and others and wonder - The Bible says that we are made in His image, but I canot see God as looking like us. I believe we are evolving and will one "day" eventually become like him!

[corydoras]

I agree but he is as he so often points out an educator in addition to being arguably the worlds most prominent and outspoken athiest. The evidence of evolution is undeiably there, but if people are constantly telling they guy that there is controversy, that the evidence isnt compelling, that there are gaps or that they just pain don't believe it, as an educator, his first instinct should be to lay out the evidence out in a way that is both easily understood and persuasive. Hopefully, that's what he's done in his new book. I seriously doubt that it will ocupy the intelectual high ground that his early publications did but if it equips more people to ask appropriate and probing questions when the christian fundamentalists try to dip their oar into education, then more power to his elbow.

But Ken these people will not accept the evidence for Evolution and Common Descent, no matter how it is presented to them.

 

How do you argue with people who are convinced that ceratosaurus was alive and well circa 2348 BC? How do you argue with people who think that in c2348 BC there were only seven humans alive on the planet and they were floating around in an ark, when we know that at this time the Akkadians were doing just fine Mesopotamia, the Sixth Dynasty was going tickety-boo in Egypt and major cities were being developed in the Indus Valley?

 

It's not just biology they have an issue with, it's Geology and History too. You can't educate people who stick their fingers in there ears and sing "Tra-lal-la, I can't hear you."

[corydoras]

The Bible says that we are made in His image, but I canot see God as looking like us. I believe we are evolving and will one "day" eventually become like him!

But if you say this KB then you don't truly understand evolution. Evolution has no goal, no target, no end-point. There is no evolutionary "ladder".

[kleinboet]

Cory, I'll ask you the same old question. Have you got proof of this? According to the experts, we may lose our appendix, tonsils and adenoids, in other words we are evolving. I have always thought that evolution was the survival of the fittest - adapt or die!!

[Ken L]

It's not just biology they have an issue with, it's Geology and History too. You can't educate people who stick their fingers in there ears and sing "Tra-lal-la, I can't hear you."

 

No, you will never change people like that but you can mitigate the effect that they can have on everybody else by making the counter arguments as available and as accessable os humanly possible.

If that isn't done, America's slide into a serise of fundamentalist enclaves with armed training camps for the various militias seems to be inevitable.

The way things over there seem to be going at the moment, it's only a matter of time before the parallels betwen the US christian militias and the Al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan become complete and some numbnuts flies a plane into the dome of the rock or the Al Haram.

 

One of the things that really makes me sick is watching the piety armsrace between the two presidential candidates every four years. Woudn't it be great to see an electorate that has the nouse to turn awat from the fundamentalists and the candidates that they support ?

[Leon Roskilly]

According to the experts, we may lose our appendix, tonsils and adenoids, in other words we are evolving. I have always thought that evolution was the survival of the fittest - adapt or die!!

 

 

I always thought that the phrase 'survival of the fittest' is far too ambiguous, and often misunderstood.

 

It can mean running faster, jumping higher ensures suvival, but sometimes it's best to hide and move slow to conserve energy that is the better strategy.

 

'fittest' can mean either bigger, stronger etc (which is what most people understand by the phrase), whereas it can also mean 'fittest for purpose' which is a better description of evolutionary response. Perhaps 'survival of the most apt' would be a more apt and less ambiguous phrase.

 

Life has existed on Earth for 3.5 billion years.

 

During that time here has been many countless species that have evolved and become extinct.

 

Most of the species that existed 100 million years ago are no longer around.

 

It's the common fate of most species to eventually become extinct, making way for another, somtimes leading to a dearth of life on Earth.

 

Evolutionary history is littered with 'dead-ends'.

 

During the 3.5 billion years of life's history, a period when millions of species have come and gone, only one species has developed significant intelligence.

 

Now modern man has only been around for 60,000 years or so, and all indications are that the consequence of our intelligence can only lead to inevitable disaster.

 

Rather than evolving to become 'like God', it is far more likely that our brief appearance on the evolutionary stage will soon draw to a close, just one more evolutionary dead end, unsuited to life in a mutually dependent ecosystem.

 

see: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1756...the-future.html

 

One speaker in Albuquerque, epidemiologist Warren Hern of the University of Colorado at Boulder, even likened the expansion of human cities to the growth and spread of cancer, predicting "death" of the Earth in about 2025.

 

He points out that like the accelerated growth of a cancer, the human population has quadrupled in the past 100 years, and at this rate will reach a size in 2025 that leads to global collapse and catastrophe.

 

But there's worse..........

 

We've been searching the stars (there are thousands of billions of them) for signs that we are not the only intelligent beings in the universe.

 

Logic says that there should be many out there.

 

Unless 'intelligence' is an evolutionary path that always leads to consumption of all the planet's resources, destuction of the host ecosystem, and eventual extinction.

 

It's so quiet out there!

Edited August 9, 2009 by Leon Roskilly

[Ken L]

It's so quiet out there!

 

If you lived next door to a religious community occupied by a bunch a swivel eyed zellots, would you go knocking on the door and inviting them to your BBQ ?

 

I wouldn't.

[kleinboet]

Leon - Survival of the fittest - I see it as the being who is best adapted to circumstance stands the best chance of survival! look at the mammals that have evolved to live in the sea, they breathe air but are perfectly at home in the sea (or river).

Look at the herbivores, they go from Elephant to leaf cutting ants - but they are all perfectly adapted!

and the meat eaters are there to keep the herds of herbivores fit and healthy, weeding out the sick and lame for food.

We ARE evolving, we live longer, have less hair, are generally taller (and larger!) than our forebears.

People say it is because of 'medical breakthroughs', okay, but what are these breakthroughes, other than mankind fighting for survival.

Edited August 9, 2009 by kleinboet

[corydoras]

Cory, I'll ask you the same old question. Have you got proof of this? According to the experts, we may lose our appendix, tonsils and adenoids, in other words we are evolving. I have always thought that evolution was the survival of the fittest - adapt or die!!

Proof of what,KB. Proof that humans are still evolving or may evolve further; it's a moot point, some biologists think we are some think we are not. Appendix, wisdom teeth, etc are evidence evidence that we have evolved, rather than evidence that we are still evolving.

 

Proof that there is no 'evolutionary ladder'? I havenothing to proove. There is nothing in the Theory of Evolution that says that there is one. I don't claim there is, neither did Darwin, nor does any modern day Evolutionary Developmentologist.

 

If you think that there is an evolutionary ladder, striving for some ultimate goal then you would have to proove that to me, because your the one making the claim.

Edited August 9, 2009 by corydoras